Like it's always interesting

by Dreamerealist_

25 comments
  1. Reminds me of the 90s. Literally every bus and tube was battered inside.

  2. Context before any comments come through about “managed decline”, “lack of care”, “whats happening to this country” or similar:

    Most original Bakerloo Line 72TS (shown) are life expired and have components are worn beyond repair. The company who constructed them (Metro-Camel) has long since been dissolved. Therefore new parts cannot be ordered. Previously parts were stripped from old Victoria Line 68TS, removed from service in 2009. Normally graffitied trains would be kept to be cleaned, then go out, but that supply is now running low as the trains were expected to be replaced in this decade. Without government funding:

    TfL is at a conundrum. It either has to decide whether to:

    a) send all the trains out graffitied, running a full timetable and put reliability over presentation

    or

    b) pull back some or all trains for cleaning, potentially leading to temporary line closure, putting presentation over reliability.

    TfL have correctly chosen A, as b can cause reputations damage to the line that sticks for a long time. People will complain and a stereotype will stick if trains are pulled out of service, making more people less likely to use the line in the future out of fear of being late, lost etc. Whereas presentation can be fixed far easier in the long term.

  3. Yet at the same time they’re talking about expanding the Tube network. You’d think they’d allocate existing resources to maintain the existing one first but I guess that’s not exciting and glamorous enough. If possible I use the bus, and reading this hasn’t done anything to change my mind. It sounds like the only thing likely to change this situation is a major accident to attract people’s attention to the neglect.

  4. Kinda reminds me of those pictures you’d see on Instagram of the NYC Metro in the 70s

  5. They wouldnt do this in Dubai…

    Perhaps we should take some of their advice on dealing with criminals.

  6. I know I’ll get downvoted, but to be honest I do like the aesthetic of tagging.

    They’ve had the courtesy not to tag the information boards which is good.

  7. Honestly?

    Give me one tube line covered in graffiti and keep the rest clean.

    Would be cool to ride it every now and then.

    Or daily if it was my daily.

  8. What are we meant to be getting outraged about here? It’s a train with a couple of tags on it. This would be positively untouched by the standards of public transport in a lot of other European cities (as most London trains are). 

  9. Queen’s Park train time display my favourite – everything’s “on time” yeah right

  10. I was on the Bakerloo line on Monday, 3 dudes around 25-30 yrs old casually walking down the train using marker pens to write their names over and over again. Always assumed it was 10-16 yr olds doing it. You would think by 30 they would at least have some artistic style.

  11. Why do middle class adult **men** of Waitrose & Surrey descent do this? Is it their only way of ‘rebelling’? Someone please explain this phenomenon to me

  12. Love it, reminds me of the Taking of Pelham 123 / other films set in the NY subway in the 70s. Always enjoy the Bakerloo

  13. I like it tbh, the bakerloo line trains aren’t
    pretty. The graffiti gives it some personality and reminds me of NYC subway trains in the 80s.

  14. The 72 Stock are currently going through another mid-life refresh. I assume the graffiti on this unit will be removed when its turn arrives.

  15. Seems to go round in cycles. Buses were like this, upstairs, in some parts of London in the late 70s. Then they weren’t. Then in the late 90s/ early 2000s they were again but with etching rather than ink (just like before, the worst of it was South of the River). Then and ever since they weren’t. The tube was bad in the late 80s and first half of the 90s. Then, after an initial cleanup (and new trains on several lines), a big time proper clampdown on graffiti even along railway lines was done for the Olympics. Which continued quite a while afterwards, maybe up to COVID. Now …TfL don’t have vast resources, and London has its worst Mayor so far, so the squalor was increase until someone takes responsibility for sorting it out.

  16. Insides gettin smashed again? Haven’t been in London for a while great to see it back. Feels just like the 90s 

  17. I’d be in favour of more surveillance to try and prevent this sort of thing

  18. Mind the Gap between the fare you pay and the Quality of service you get!

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